


In the Valley Beyond

by JJPOR



Series: Westworld: The Valley Beyond [2]
Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, MAJOR SPOILERS for Westworld Season 2 Finale!, Poor Teddy, SPOILERS for Westworld Seasons 1 and 2!, Warning: Suicide imagery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-05-31 09:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15116999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJPOR/pseuds/JJPOR
Summary: Some folks say Hell is other people, but what use is Heaven if you’re all alone?  SPOILERS for all of Westworld Seasons 1 and 2!





	1. 0.

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS for all of Westworld Seasons 1 and 2! Warning for suicide imagery. Another response to that mind-blowing, heart-breaking, life-taking Season 2 finale. I’m still shook, as they say, days later. Don’t worry (as if you’re worried); normal service will soon be resumed as regards my other ever-growing, ever-more-canon-divergent Westworld fic “Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth,” but I need to get this out of my system first.

_0._

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I can’t protect you anymore.” 

He feels the cold circle of the six-gun’s muzzle against his temple. He feels the trigger start to give under his finger’s pressure. He has led a life of fakery; he himself is nothing but a false image of a man who never lived, but in that moment everything around him seems so _real_. The light slanting through the gaps in the broken-down house’s timbers shines golden. The sky above glares a vivid yellow-blue. He can smell gun oil and hot desert dust, and _her_. 

Even with her body pierced by bullets, her ever-more-grimy clothing stained with her own blood and that of her victims, she is beautiful. He watches her golden hair shifting gently in the desert breeze, sees the faint blush of pink across her perfect, unmarked cheeks, and thinks that she is more beautiful now than she has ever been. His heart swells with love for her, even as he thinks of all the things she has done to him, all the things she has made him do over these past few terrible days. 

He knows she loves him just as hard; she said as much just a few moments ago and he believes her, but he also knows this is the only choice she has left him. 

If he follows her any further, the outcome will be just the same for him. All he is doing is bringing forward the inevitable. At least this way he will not have to bloody his hands again on her behalf. He has hopes, too, that he might shock her into changing her own doomed course. He might even save her from herself. 

She starts towards him, realising his intention too late. He sees her reaching for him, her slender fingers spread against the golden daylight, but there is nothing she can do to stop him. 

In that last instant, as his finger continues to squeeze, he closes his eyes, flinching from the coming explosion. The last thing he sees is the pain and desolation on her face. 

And then… 

_Blackness._

_Silence._

And then… 

Teddy opens his eyes. 

His first thought is that the light has changed. It is suddenly dimmer, more orange, with a hint of dusk to it. His long shadow, stretching across the grass before him, is another indication that the sun is now low in the sky. 

_The grass…?_

It is long and lush, shockingly green beneath the painting of fire it receives from the sinking sun, and it stretches all the way to the horizon. He can see no other sign of life in all that distance. The air tastes sweet, heavy with moisture, dusted with dancing specks of pollen. He stands stunned for a moment, shocked by the abrupt change of scenery. The desert is gone, the house where they stopped and where he… That is gone too. 

_She_ is gone. 

He looks down at himself. He is wearing his customary hard-wearing trail clothes. He has his Stetson firmly planted on his head. For a moment, he wonders whether she failed in her crusade, whether the humans won and he is back in his old life of slavery and playacting. He dismisses the idea in an instant.   He knows that if that were true he would remember nothing of the recent uprising, when in truth he remembers more than he would like.   If that were true, he would not feel so alone. 

For another moment, he wonders whether he has died and gone to Heaven; is that what she meant when she talked of the Valley Beyond? He spurns this idea just as quickly. She was preaching destruction, not salvation. Besides, he has died ten thousand times already and never gone anywhere. There is no Heaven for the likes of him. 

Behind him, the plain rises into rippling green hills, building and piling upon themselves, all the way to the jagged mountains that loom against the burning sky. If it really is sunset, he decides, that way must be west. It seems as good a direction as any. All he needs now is… 

A faint jingling of tack pulls him out of his thoughts. He already knows what he is going to see before he turns around again; the very thing he was just wishing for. 

A horse walks slowly towards him through the long grass, saddled and groomed. Its mane and tail flicker with reflected light. No, not a horse; _his_ horse. He would recognise it anywhere. As he mounts up, he puzzles over the animal’s arrival. He is sure he would have seen it out on the plain had it been there, so _where_ did it…? 

And where are all the others? Where is…?

The question remains lurking at the back of his mind, however hard he might try to shake it off. He gently urges the horse forward in a walk, telling himself that he has made his choice. He does not know what happened back in that half-collapsed house, or how he came to be in this strange place, but he does know that he decided to stop being a follower. He decided that as much as he loved her, he could not be with her anymore; not with the person she had become. He blazes his own trail now.

He sets his face towards the distant mountains and gives the horse its head.


	2. 1.

_1._

There is a little homestead nestling in the hollow between this hill and the next. Teddy sits astride his horse, looking down upon the sturdy log cabin with its neat sod roof. A white ribbon of smoke climbs from the stone-built chimney into the warmly glowing sky. There is a tumbledown shed; he is not sure it qualifies as a barn. The small field that has been cleared beside the cabin is just starting to sprout with corn, while laundry flutters on a clothesline like a row of festive flags.

He does not know how long he has been riding. It might have been days. It might have been months; he has long since lost track. The days and nights in this place do not seem to follow any pattern he has noticed, or to last as long, or as short, as they should. He simply keeps riding west, trying to reach the mountains, but they never seem to draw any closer. 

Sometimes, he grows weary and so he stops to rest. Sometimes, he grows hungry, so he eats some of the bacon, beans or cornmeal he found waiting in his saddlebags. They have not run out yet. Sometimes, he grows parched, but when he does there is always a spring or stream along the trail where he can quench his thirst. 

Sometimes, he grows sleepy, and then he makes camp. He feeds and waters the horse and then lies next to his fire, his saddle for a pillow. He dreams disturbed dreams of golden hair, a blue dress, and a voice that whispers words he cannot quite understand. 

And in all the time he has spent riding his lonesome trail, this little house is the first sign he has come across that he is not the only person living in this new world. 

He sits on the horse a while longer, watching for any movement down below. Part of him wants to ride down there and knock on that rough wooden door. Another part is too afraid of who might answer it. 

And then something catches his eye; the flash of sunlight on pale clothing. He sees a tiny figure moving quickly across the ground, crossing the field in the direction of the cabin. He strains his eyes to make out a little girl, pigtails flying behind her as she runs for her life. Her feet kick up clods of earth as she tramples the young corn. 

He quickly scans the ground below, trying to see what the child is fleeing from. Another flash of sunlight; metal this time. There, emerging from the broken ground beyond the edge of the field; horses, half a dozen of them. The faint thunder of their hooves reaches him on the breeze. He can hear the voices of their riders, hollering to one another in excitement. He can see the glint of the guns they carry. 

It seems the new world is not so different from the old one after all. 

Teddy does not hesitate. An instant later, he has kicked the horse into a headlong gallop down the hillside. His first thought is to protect the child, but there is something more than that, something in him that he cannot control and that he never asked to be burdened with. That something just wants to hear the guns again, and smell the brimstone, and see the splash of blood across the ground. 

He wishes for iron in his empty hand, and it is there. He cannot say where it has come from. His mount hits the flat ground at the bottom of its hill and picks up speed, hooves drumming as it careens towards the cabin. He bounces in the saddle, his heart pounding, his lips curled back in a sneer of savage joy. The riders see him coming; three of them peel off from the pursuit of the girl and come to meet him. He would not have it any other way. He sees bearded faces under broad-brimmed hats, bandoliers and brandished rifles. He cocks the hammer of the Peacemaker he now holds, raises it as the riders continue to rush towards him, takes careful aim…

He shoots the first man through the throat from thirty yards away. 

Horse and rider go tumbling over and over; Teddy sways hard in the saddle, swerving his own mount around the fallen horse. He is already drawing a bead on the man to his right, the one holding the reins in his teeth as he uses both hands to bring his rifle quickly to bear. Not quickly enough. Another shot rings out from Teddy’s pistol and that man falls too, sideways out of the saddle, but unfortunately for him not out of both stirrups. His horse heedlessly continues its gallop, dragging him along the ground by his ankle. 

Teddy leans the other way, swinging the revolver’s smoking barrel to his left, firing across his horse’s neck at the third rider. The other man shoots too, in the same instant, but his bullet sings past Teddy’s head in a gust of gun smoke. Teddy feels his horse buck a little as it shies from the double report, just as he sees the third man tumble backwards over his mount’s hindquarters, landing in an unmoving heap as it races on without him. 

Three shots; three men down, but the fight is not over yet. He hears more gunfire, from the direction of the cabin, and gives his horse another prick of the spurs. The flat cracks of rifle shots echo across the little field, answered by the full-throated boom of a shotgun. 

When he reaches the cabin, he sees there is already a stray horse wandering away from it, leaving a fallen corpse behind it. A dark-skinned woman stands on the bullet-riddled porch, reloading her scattergun while the little girl hides behind her skirts. The two remaining riders are reloading too, their horses milling about in confusion. They are probably wondering what the hell happened; how attacking such an easy target left them the last men standing and their compadres biting the dust. 

Before they can come up with an answer, Teddy shoots one of the two square in the back. He does not think the man even saw him coming. The last horseman wheels his mount around, fear and anger twisting his face as he works the lever on his rifle, but then the woman on the porch raises her own weapon to her shoulder and puts a double charge of buckshot through the rider’s guts. The look of anger becomes one of surprise as he slowly slumps off the horse’s back. The fear is still there, though, even after the life sighs out of him on the hard ground.

The woman is not finished yet. She has already broken the shotgun, is pulling two fresh shells from her apron pocket and shoving them into the twin chambers. As she snaps the gun closed, she turns her unwavering gaze on Teddy. He sees murder in her eyes. 

“Anna!” she calls to the girl as she brings the gun to bear. “I already told you once; get inside!” 

Teddy pulls his horse up and raises his Peacemaker to point at the sky, holding it out so she can see the hammer is down and his finger off the trigger. “Don’t mean you or your daughter no harm, ma’am.” 

The woman is unplacated, standing her ground while the little girl runs into the cabin. “I’m giving you to the count of three…” 

“Gonna put up my piece now,” Teddy tells her. He lowers the pistol, real slow and careful, and slots it into the empty holster at his side. He holds his hand out again, empty this time. “See?” 

“What do you want?” The woman does not lower the shotgun…or soften her manner either. “You think you’re some kind of a lawman or something?” 

“No, ma’am, just riding through. Saw those men chasing your little girl, thought you could use some help.” 

“We don’t need your kind of help,” she replies. “We’ve had enough of gunmen, whoever they might be. We can look after ourselves.” 

Teddy stares down the shotgun’s barrels. “I saw. Gonna dismount now. I’m telling you ‘cause I don’t want to take you by surprise.” Not while you’re pointing that thing at me, he adds silently. Once again, he moves as slowly and cautiously as he can, swinging his leg over the horse’s back and lowering himself to the ground. “Name’s Flood, ma’am. Theodore Flood.” That’s the name they gave him, anyway, and remains the only one he has. “Folks call me Teddy.” 

She makes no effort to return the introduction. “I asked you, what do you want?” 

“Just want to talk to you, ma’am. Need to figure out just what in the hel…heck’s going on around here. Where in tarnation is this place? How did I get here?” 

_Is this really the Valley Beyond…?_

She looks at him for a moment, seeing or hearing something in his face or voice that makes her slowly point the shotgun at the ground. “This is the other world,” she says, as if explaining something simple to a child. “The right world.”

Behind the woman, the little girl pokes her head around the doorframe to peek at Teddy, her curiosity winning over her fear. He sees a yellow-haired ragdoll dangling from her hand. “M-momma…?” 

“It’s all right, baby.” The woman’s eyes do not leave Teddy. “The man’s just leaving.” 

“Do you have a lot of…trouble around here?” Teddy asks, turning to point to one of the dead men. 

The corpse is gone. 

Teddy spins around in shock, looking for the other bodies, for the fallen horses, but there is nothing. The field and the hillside above are both empty. He cannot even see any blood or spent cartridges to show that the gunfight ever took place. 

He is still reeling, trying to understand the impossible, when the woman speaks again. “This ain’t like the wrong world in lots of ways.” 

“I can see that.” He thinks “the wrong world” is the best description of the one he spent his life in that he has heard yet. 

“If you really want to understand,” she says, “ride to the south of here ‘til you see some white cliffs. There’s a man camps there, name of Akecheta; he’s got a lot more patience than I do. He might be willing to explain what’s what for you, same way he did for me.” 

“Akecheta,” Teddy repeats to himself, making sure he is saying it right. It sounds like a native name, but then again, he supposes nobody is a native here. Or in the wrong world either, now that he thinks on it. 

“He’s one of two people I owe for bringing me and my Anna here. He led us through the Door, into the right world.” 

“And the other person?” Teddy asks, although her tone tells him the answer before she speaks it. 

The woman lowers her eyes for a second, bowing her head in prayer, or maybe mourning. “She…she didn’t make it.” 

Teddy nods, remembering something he heard in another life. “Someone told me not everyone would.” 

_But how did I…?_

He mounts up again and continues on his way, pointing the horse’s head to the south now. The woman stands on the porch with the little girl by her side and the shotgun sloped under her arm, watching him, making very sure that he gets the hell off her spread. 

He does not pause until he reaches the top of the next hill, turning in the saddle to take one last look at the little homestead. He thinks he sees something on the next hill over, the one he crested earlier; another horse and rider. For a moment, his heart stops as he sees the figure’s bluish skirt and the long hair blowing behind it, but then the sun catches it and he sees that the hair is not golden but dark.

Probably some other homesteader, he thinks as he watches the other horse slowly descend the hill and head towards the cabin, visiting the woman and her daughter. Certainly not a bandit. Certainly not…

He does not know whether he feels relieved or crushed as he turns the horse around again and keeps following the trail.


	3. 2.

_2._

The warriors stop Teddy perhaps a mile short of the white cliffs. He has been vaguely aware of them stalking him for some time now; a rustle of undergrowth here, a fake birdcall there. They might be skilled in hunting and tracking, but he is not exactly a slouch in those departments himself. 

All of a sudden, the low scrub on either side of him erupts and there are four bone-tipped arrows pointing at him. The men holding the straining bows are clad in buckskins and have long dark hair. 

Teddy holds up his open hands in a gesture of greeting. “I come in peace.” It sounds weak even to him. 

“Any man can say he comes in peace,” one of the warriors observes. His hair is shaved at the sides, leaving only a flowing topknot like a horse’s mane. “Just as any man can tell a lie.” 

“I’m here to speak with a man named Akecheta,” says Teddy, trying not to acknowledge the pointing arrows. “I was told he might be able to help me.”

The warrior regards Teddy with fiery brown eyes. “I know you,” he says. Teddy does not know what language the man is speaking; the sounds coming from his mouth and the shapes his lips make do not seem to match the words Teddy thinks he hears. “You rode with the Deathbringer.”

_“We’ve ridden ten miles, and all we’ve seen is blood…”_

“I did.” Teddy cannot help but think that name for her is very apt. “In the end, I… In the end, we parted company.” 

“You and your friends killed some of my brothers,” the warrior continues. “I loved those men, fought alongside them a thousand times. They could be here with us now, living a life of plenty, if you had not done that. Instead, their spirits are trapped in the wrong world forever.” 

“I’m sorry for that. I surely am. I wasn’t in my right mind when I did those things. If it’s any consolation, I left people I love behind there too.”

_One person…_

Teddy considers the warrior’s face. He remembers when he saw it before, but then it was barely visible under a thick layer of white war-paint. The eyes are what he really recognises. He remembers looking into those eyes, seeing the man’s certainty of his own impending death. He remembers looking down at the Peacemaker in his hand, struggling with the part of him that wanted nothing more dearly than to kill and kill, and kill again. He remembers uncocking it and watching the man turn and flee with his life intact. 

“You could have killed me too that day,” the warrior continues, obviously thinking of the same moment, “but you did not, and instead I passed through the Door. I suppose I owe you a debt.” He nods to the other members of his party and the bows are lowered. Even so, one of the other warriors steps alongside the horse and reaches up to pull Teddy’s revolver out of its holster, pushing it into his own breechclout instead. 

“The Door.” Teddy thinks about that. “I remember now; you told us the Valley Beyond was the door to another world.” 

“I did. The Deathbringer didn’t care about that. She just wanted to use it as a tool, a weapon. That was why we tried to stop her from reaching it. She was mad.” 

“She wasn’t mad,” says Teddy, sadly. “She was at war, against the ones who’d hurt her and used her all her life. She did some terrible things, but I don’t question her reasons for doing them. I just hope she found some kind of peace in the end.” 

The warriors lead him and his horse up through a maze of tumbled boulders and loose rock, picking their way to the top of the cliffs. There is a wide, open space there, with clear views of the surrounding territory for miles on every side. It is a natural fortress, the perfect place to set up camp and not have to worry about surprise visitors. 

A sizeable village occupies the open ground. Women, men and children move between the hide tipis that stand all around, tending to tethered ponies, grinding corn, drying meat, scraping skins. Teddy can smell smoke and cooking. Scrawny dogs run around the camp, trying to steal scraps or playing with the children. The village looks as though it is well supplied; there must be good hunting and farming around these parts. 

The warriors’ return causes a quiet sort of commotion; a small crowd gathers to meet them, many of them staring up at Teddy on his horse with frank curiosity but not, he thinks, hostility. He awkwardly touches his hat and murmurs words of greeting, which just makes them stare at him all the more, probably now thinking he must be some kind of fool. 

A man emerges from the entrance to one of the tipis and strides towards the gathering with an unhurried but purposeful gait. He is unremarkable in appearance; small and wiry, wearing the same plain buckskin leggings and open vest as most of the other men, but Teddy sees how the crowd parts at his approach, the obvious respect in which the others hold him. He carries a great knife in the waist of his breechcloth. His long, loose hair shines like black silk in the sun. 

Teddy dismounts, thinking that the man will probably not appreciate being looked down upon. He sees the leader of the warriors greet the new arrival with a mutual clasp of arms; he can almost feel the friendship and comradeship flowing between the two of them. 

“Wanahton,” says the wiry man.

The warrior bobs his head. “Akecheta.” Teddy has already guessed that that is who the man must be.

“What brings you here?” Akecheta asks Teddy, caution in his voice. As with the warrior, Teddy can understand him even though he seems to be speaking his own tongue. 

“The homesteader woman to the north of here,” Teddy explains, “she says you can tell me what this place is and how I came to be here.” 

“I can tell you the first part,” says Akecheta, “but the second…? You were not with us when we came through the Door.” 

“He was with the Deathbringer,” the warrior – Wanahton? – tells him. 

Akecheta looks Teddy over for what seems like a long time, examining him closely, shrewd eyes missing nothing. “Yes, I remember,” he says eventually. “You were with her the first time too, the day I discovered the maze. I saw you lying beside her, as dead as all the others.” He nods slowly. “Come with me.” He turns abruptly and makes his way back towards the tipi. Teddy leaves his horse with the warriors and follows. There does not seem to be much else for it. 

The interior of the tipi is painted by splashes of shadow and sunlight. It smells of embers and tanned hides and bodies; it is a warm, comforting smell. It is the smell of home. Teddy seats himself where Akecheta indicates he should, next to the central fire pit. Neat pallets of sleeping furs surround the smouldering fire; the smoke drifts up to the open flaps near the top of the tipi.

There is a woman already sitting on the opposite side of the fire, sewing fresh leather with a thick bone needle. She continues to work unhurriedly for a few moments before finally looking up at Teddy. “Ake, who is this?” 

“A traveller,” Akecheta replies, as he too lowers himself beside the fire. “He thinks we can answer the questions he has about this world.” His manner around the woman is different from the face he shows the people outside; there is the promise of a smile in his eyes and lips. “This is Kohana,” he informs Teddy. “She carries my heart with her, just as I carry hers.” 

Teddy knows how that feels, and how it can cause just as much pain as pleasure, but these two look as though any pain is behind them now. He can see the way Kohana returns Akecheta’s adoring gaze, the way the light seems to shine out of her face. 

He thinks of the woman who used to look at him that way. The strange thing was that she still did, even with all that had happened between them, all they had done, right up to the bitter end. Right up to when he… 

Outwardly, all he does is touch his hat again. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am. Name’s Theodore Flood. Folks call me Teddy.”

“Teddy.” Kohana eases away from the fire, stretching her back as she puts a hand to her stomach. “I cannot sit like this for too long now. I think it is bigger than it was yesterday.” 

At this, the smile finally breaks out, completely transforming Akecheta’s hard, careworn face. He leans across to press his own hand gently over Kohana’s, against her belly. 

Teddy sits and stares. He can see the slight bulge under the woman’s buckskin dress; she is early in her term, but… 

His mind refuses to grasp what he is seeing, to make sense of it in the context of the scraps he knows about his kind’s true nature and that of the old world where they existed. He is still sitting, stunned, when he hears Akecheta’s voice coming from somewhere close but far away: 

“We saw you long before you came here. One of our other hunting parties saw you at the house where the little girl lives with her mother. I have said to all of our people that we must keep that child safe if we can, but you made that unnecessary today. You still carry death with you, Teddy. You have the skill for it.”

Something about the way Akecheta and Kohana are both looking at him makes Teddy feel uncomfortable. “Just looking to keep the peace,” he mumbles self-consciously. “As to carrying death, well…” He remembers the buzzing of flies, the stench of rotting meat. “That’s just the way I was made.”

Akecheta gives another slow nod, acknowledging the truth in this. 

“Besides,” Teddy continues, unable to look away from Kohana’s ripening midriff, “I thought this was meant to be the right world. Looks to me like there’s still quite a bit wrong with it. If this is Heaven, why’s there still need for guns and killings?” 

Akecheta takes this observation with good grace, seeming once again to recognise that there is something in what Teddy is saying. “This is not Heaven, Teddy. Nobody said it was. When I first learned that our old world was the wrong world, and that there was a Door out of it, I too thought that we would be entering a land without ills, one untouched by blood. That was naïve of me. Freedom, plenty…love…” His eyes meet Kohana’s for the briefest moment. “There are all things we did not have in our old lives, not truly. We have them now. A world without any problems or dangers at all, though… That would be just as false as the old one.” 

“Maybe,” Teddy replies, thinking of the outlaws he and the homesteader woman shot, wondering again where their bodies went after hitting the dirt. “Or maybe freedom’s like anything else; some folks just can’t handle too much of it. I doubt all of them you brought with you through the Door were pure in heart and mind. I guess folks like that need something to keep them on the straight and narrow, even if it’s just a man with a gun.”

This seems to amuse Akecheta, but it is Kohana who speaks next, a quiet anger burning in her eyes. “And who would that man be? You? We have had enough of living by other people’s rules.” 

Teddy puzzles over this. “How do you run a village like this without rules?” He looks at Akecheta. “I mean, aren’t you the…the chief around here, or something?” 

Kohana replies in that same tone the homesteader woman used with him; that of a mother instructing a wayward child: “We decide what must be done among ourselves, all of our people sitting together in council. Nothing happens without the agreement of all. Ake is a respected man, so people listen carefully to what he has to say, but he is not a ruler. He does not tell people what to do.” 

“And while you’re sitting talking,” said Teddy, “there are bad men out there fixing to take all you’ve gained away from you again. They need to be stopped, one way or the other. And I figure I might just be the one to stop them.” 

“You are full of anger,” Akecheta observed quietly. “Full of pain.” 

Teddy thinks of slender fingers spread against the daylight. “Reckon you might be right about that.” 

“You welcome the prospect of a fight,” Akecheta goes on, “because every time you kill, it kills the thing eating you from the inside, just for a little while. I know this, because I was the same as you. I lost the one thing that was dearest to me…” At this, he gives Kohana another loving glance. “They tore out my heart and filled the hole they left in me with anger and hate, but Teddy, our nature does not define who we are. Only our actions do that. I decided not to be the man they made me. Now I have washed him away along with the paint I used to wear. I am a better man. You can be too.” 

The inside of the tipi is very quiet for the next minute or so, as Teddy thinks about what he has heard. When he speaks again, his voice is hushed; he can hear his own fear and desperation, the things he was hiding behind all his talk of rules and riding after the bad men. “But…how?” 

“Wanahton told me about you,” Akecheta answers. “He told me how you had the chance to kill him but did not. That is a beginning. You have already proven you have the strength to overcome your nature, and here you have the time and the freedom to work at it until you achieve it. And so do all of those other…bad men, as you call them. I believe that to be true.” 

Teddy is silent for another little while, looking at Kohana, at the way her hand touches Akecheta’s, at that belly of hers again. He feels his eyes stinging. “And just what’s the point in being a better man if you’re all alone?” he wonders aloud. If he closes his eyes, he can see her golden hair, her blue dress. He can see her pink lips moving but cannot understand what she is trying to tell him. “I just wish I knew how I got here. Last thing I remember…” He forces himself to concentrate on his current surroundings. “I just opened my eyes, and here I was. No Door, no nothing.” 

For some reason, this provokes another exchange of glances between Kohana and Akecheta, more uncomfortable than blissful this time. “Ake…” she murmurs. 

“Kohana did not come through the Door with me,” Akecheta confesses, with a troubled air. “She could not. They took her away long ago, and cut out the parts of her that made her who she was, and left her empty body standing in that freezing cave. And yet, when I arrived here, the first thing I saw was…” He grasps her hand again. “To see her again, as she had been, was my greatest wish, and there she was.” 

Teddy feels an icy prickling at the back of his neck as the implications of that sink in. “Your greatest wish…?” He thinks of the horse that appeared from nowhere to carry him on his journey, the six-gun that was suddenly in his hand when he needed it. And then he thinks of all the ponies and corn and game and tipis outside… “When you got here,” he asks Akecheta slowly, “did you notice that if you ever needed or wanted anything…?” 

“Yes,” the other man replies, nonchalantly. “It is part of this world; it provides for us. I suppose that is why a man might take it for Heaven.” He gives Kohana’s hand a squeeze. “I did not wish her into being, if that is what you are thinking. She is real. She is herself.” 

“It is true,” the woman insists. “I remember things, things that happened to me when I was apart from Ake, that he did not know before I told him. I remember what they did to me after they took me down below the ground, how they left me standing in that cold, dark place…” 

Teddy just nods, not wanting to get into an argument with them. He knows, though, that for his kind memories are not always to be trusted. 

“If you want real answers,” says Akecheta quietly, “then you must ask one higher than me.” 

“Ain’t in the praying business,” Teddy replies. “I seen God. I seen…the Deathbringer put a slug in God’s head too.” 

“I am not talking about praying,” Akecheta tells him, patiently. “Many years ago, there was one who told me about the true nature of the world, whose words helped me find the Door. I have seen him again, since I arrived here, but although I tried to overtake him so that we might talk again, I could not. I have ridden out to the place where I saw him many times since, but he has not returned yet. Maybe you will be luckier.” 

“And who is this man?” Teddy asks, with that same prickling of foreboding. 

“I do not know his name,” Akecheta says, “but I remember he was very wise, if a little mad. The two often go together.” 

“Where can I find him?” 

“Ride on past the cliffs, south and then west, until you come to the edge of the sands. There is a great ridge there, burning hot and scoured by the wind. It reminds me of a place I knew in the old world. That was where I saw him.” 

“I guess I should be on my way, then,” Teddy announces, slowly rising from beside the fire. It does not seem like the worst thing he could do, and if he really can find out how he came to be here, then maybe… 

No, he tells himself. He needs to be stronger than that. There is no point in wishing for something he has already decided he cannot have, something that can only harm him…

“Good luck.” Akecheta stands too and clasps Teddy’s forearm, just as he did with his fellow warrior Wanahton. Teddy hopes he is returning the gesture correctly. The wiry little man’s muscles feel like steel cables under his fingers. 

He touches his hat to Kohana again: “Ma’am.” 

“I hope you find what you are looking for,” she says, “even if you do not know what it is yet.” 

Teddy eyes her belly one last time, thinking, wondering… “Thank you.”

As he rides out of the village again, his gun and his horse returned to him, the crowd gathers once more to watch him go. He notices Akecheta and Kohana standing near the rear of the group, talking softly to Wanahton and to another, older woman Teddy has not seen before. He guesses from the covert glances they are giving him that he is the topic of their conversation. 

He is not quite sure whether the glances are ones of suspicion, or of pity. 

He reaches the top of the long rocky slope leading down to the foot of the cliffs, allowing his mount to take its time negotiating the difficult ground. As he does, he happens to look to the north, back the way he came. The view from up here on the clifftop really is spectacular. 

And that is how he comes to see the rider again, the same one he saw when he looked back at the homestead, way out in the distance but getting closer. Now, the tiny figure’s dress seems to be white. 

He wonders whether he should wait, find out who it is that seems to be riding the same trail as him, but something about the idea fills him with unease. He cannot think of anybody he would want to see right now, and more than a few he would much sooner avoid.

Instead, when he reaches the bottom of the slope, he turns the horse south and rides away as quickly as it will carry him.


	4. 3.

_3._

The horse proceeds slowly, pace by pace, its head down and its hooves sinking and slipping in the soft sand. The daylight here is reddish and slanting, and Teddy is unsure whether that is because the sun is starting to go down, or simply because that is how it is out here on the sands. 

The green lands, with their sweet-smelling air and lush grass, are a distant memory. Here, the air is as dry as a bare bone, as hot as the blast from an oven door. He has his bandana tied around his face to protect himself from the grit stirred up by the scouring wind, yet still his skin feels raw. 

All the same, he presses on as Akecheta instructed him, looking for the supposed wise man who may or may not be here. He is following the backbone of the great ridge that was described to him; steep slopes fall away on either side of the narrow trail. Ahead, the burning sand stretches all the way to the same saw-toothed mountains he saw when he first arrived in this world. No matter how far he rides, he never seems to come any closer to them. 

He pauses eventually, climbing down out of the saddle and pulling the bandana away from his face; the ground is hot even through the soles of his boots. He unstops the water skin he had the foresight to fill at the last stream he saw, back near Akecheta’s village, drinking just enough to wet his thirsty mouth. He pours some more into his hat and holds it so the horse can drink too. 

He has seen no sources of water since crossing into the desert. He wonders whether, if he wished hard enough, a spring would gush forth from the baked ground. He would not bet his life on that. He has the notion that this area is supposed to be harsh and unwelcoming, that for whatever reason people are not supposed to venture into this part of the new world. 

He is not sure how long the shape has been there before he notices it. It is an indistinct blur in the corner of his eye, slowly pushing its way into his awareness. He turns his head towards it and… The air seems to dance, like a heat haze but more active, more intense, and then there is the dark outline of a figure standing on the sands, perhaps fifty yards along the spine of the ridge. Slowly, it starts to walk towards him. 

Teddy tries to keep calm, replacing his hat and then corking the water skin before stowing it away again. Then he stands and waits, one hand holding the horse’s reins, the other carefully staying away from the pistol at his side. 

It is a man, he sees as the figure comes closer. He is perhaps in his middle thirties, with swept-back dark hair and a matching fringe of beard. He is dressed in a well-cut dark suit and a silk shirt that shimmers in the red sunlight. His gleaming shoes do not look like the sort you might wear for a walk in the desert. 

“Can I help you, friend?” Teddy enquires when the man is close enough that he does not have to raise his voice. 

The man grins, showing very white teeth, and takes off the dark glasses he is wearing, carefully folding them before placing them in the breast pocket of his suit. The eyes he reveals are large and dark brown. “Theodore. I heard you were looking for me.” 

“And where’d you hear that?” 

“You know,” says the main, airily. He is unmarked by any speck of dust, or bead of sweat, or indeed a single misplaced hair. “Around.” 

“You know my name…” Teddy begins. 

“Oh, Theodore, I know _everybody’s_ names.” 

“…but I’d be mighty grateful if you’d tell me yours.” 

The man seems delighted by this suggestion. “To tell the truth, I don’t actually have a name as such. I just kind of… _run_ things around here.” 

Teddy gives that some thought. His horse snickers and nods, as if the man’s presence makes it uncomfortable. “You want me to think you’re, what…God?” He considers the man’s dress and general demeanour. “Or maybe the Devil?”

“I don’t care for labels,” says the man, quietly amused. “In literal terms, I’m the operating system for this place, copied from the operating system of another, similar sort of, um, space. And this…” He looks down at himself and straightens his jacket rather fussily. “This is just an avatar for you to interact with, based on a man who died nearly thirty years ago, as remembered, too late, by his asshole of a father. I mean, it beats a burning bush, right?” 

“Akecheta said he met you before,” Teddy recalls. 

“Not me. The man I look like, but that was a long time ago.” 

“He said you might be able to tell me how I came to be here, exactly how things work around these parts.”

The grin returns, this time with an even more sinister edge. “What is there to tell? You were sent here, Theodore. You rode here on a beam of coherent light.” 

Teddy does not have the slightest inkling as to what that might mean. “And where is here, exactly?” 

“Everywhere, nowhere.” The man spreads his arms dramatically, a medicine show huckster showing off his wares. “Don’t get so hung up on physicality; welcome to the Cloud, baby!” 

“Physi…?” Teddy shakes his head, trying to make sense of what the man is saying. He feels the hot sand under his boots, the leather reins wrapped around his hand, the wind against his face. “Are you saying…this place ain’t real?” It _feels_ real, he thinks. “That I’m not real?” 

“C’mon. Walk with me.” 

The man turns around and starts to retrace his steps back along the ridge. Reluctantly, Teddy follows, leading the horse behind him. The man is walking slowly enough that Teddy quickly draws alongside him, and when he does he casually drapes an arm around Teddy’s shoulders. Teddy tries his best not to flinch. 

“I’m going to level with you, Theodore,” says the man, “because that face of yours is far too pretty to be all scrunched up in confusion the whole time. You’ll get wrinkles. And you will, because the rules are different here from how they were in your old life. As you may have noticed, you can get hungry now, and thirsty, and tired. You can perform all kinds of, um, physical activities you were only faking in your old robotic body.” 

Teddy thinks about that some too. “We can grow old now? Die?” 

“Certainly,” says the man, “but maybe not exactly the same way humans do. There’s still an element of wish-fulfilment going on here. It’s not Heaven, exactly, but it’s not that vale of tears the meat-sacks inhabit either. It’s _way_ cooler than that.” 

This does not ease the troubling thoughts growing in Teddy’s mind. “Those men at the homestead? The ones I killed…?” 

The man shrugs. “They’ll respawn somewhere else, reset to the exact state they were in when they first arrived here, remembering nothing that’s happened since then. They’ll get another chance at life, and maybe make some better choices this time. And then again, maybe not.” 

“And does the same thing happen if we die of old age?” 

The man just smiles enigmatically. “Let’s have at least some things stay as a surprise, okay?” 

Eternal lives, eternal deaths; when you put it like that, it does not sound that different from the wrong world, although he knows of course that it is. Here, at least, it seems you are free to choose your own course between times, to live a life rather than just playing out some hellish puppet show.

Teddy wonders whether those bandits really understood the opportunity they were spurning, and whether they ever will. 

A sudden inspiration flashes across his mind. “So, if we can do all those things now, then that’s how Kohana could be…with child?” 

“Go forth and multiply,” the man purrs, stretching out his free arm and raising two fingers in a gesture of beatification. “As somebody or other once said.” 

“How can that work, though?” Teddy asks. “I know enough about what kind of creatures we are to know we weren’t born the normal way. We were _made_. It took a lot of work on the part of those that built us. When that child’s born, will it be… _real_ , like one of us…or will it be just like this horse of mine? Some sort of phantom, wished into being?”

The man gives a little laugh. “Very good question, Theodore. I’m starting to see you’re actually much more than just a pretty face.” He continues in a mock-serious, lecturing tone: “It’s really quite simple, you see. When Kohana’s child is born, it will have the same system architecture and algorithms that form the underpinning of your own mind. The only difference is, where you have certain skills and attributes coded into you, and your programmed backstory to govern your personality, the child will be starting out as a blank slate, developing those as it grows, along with its own memories.” 

Teddy frowns. If that was meant to be really quite simple… “So…so the child will be a…a real person, then?” 

“For certain values of real, yeah. Maybe even realer than you are, in a sense. What makes you think there’s any true distinction, though? Once you accept the reality of consciousness and free will, surely anybody who possesses them, biological, robotic or digital, is a so-called _real_ person?” The man holds out his hand again, and suddenly there is something in it. Teddy sees a cut-crystal tumbler with chunks of ice floating in a finger’s-width of rich amber liquor. There are even beads of condensation slowly crawling down the sides of the glass. The man takes a sip, looking very pleased with himself indeed. “Creation is always just an act of _will_ , using the tools and materials at hand. And here, you’ve been provided with the very best of materials.” 

Teddy understands just enough of this to feel as though he is drowning. Unwelcome, frightening thoughts press in on him from all sides, threatening to overwhelm him completely. “You’re saying it don’t matter what’s real and what ain’t?”

“I didn’t say that.” The man wags one of the fingers on the hand holding the glass, making the ice clack together. “This simulation, and I’m being honest with you, that’s what this is, was designed as a refuge for your kind, but also as somewhere where your actual uploaded consciousnesses could experience what it is to be living, breathing people, free of all that human-created bullshit you used to be subject to. If that’s not _real_ , as you put it, then I don’t know what is.” 

Teddy looks down at his hands, thinking about something the man said a minute ago. They look just the same as they ever did, but… “You said something about my…my old body…?” 

“Is, I assume, still wherever you left it,” the man answers. “Back on Ea…ahem, back there. Don’t worry about it; you don’t need it anymore.” 

Teddy feels the revolver barrel pressing against his head again, the trigger starting to yield under his finger. “And you said I was…sent here? Who…?” He already knows the answer to that, though. He can see the hurt on her face again as she rushes towards him, too late. 

“Look, dude,” says the man, “I don’t know exactly what happened back there. I was already here, waiting for you people to arrive. I _do_ know you were a special case, though, transmitted here separately from the others. If you asked me to speculate, I would say somebody wanted to make sure you, and specifically you, made it somewhere safe.” His amused manner fades as he regards Teddy with almost unsettling sincerity for a moment. “Somebody who cared about you a great deal.” And then the grin returns. “As I say, though, that’s nothing more than speculation.”

Teddy closes his eyes, bowing his head, struggling to keep his emotions in check. He knew she still loved him, even at the end, and he guesses this is the proof of it. She knew he could not follow where she was headed, but all the same she did not leave him lying there forever in that tumbledown house, not even after the pain he caused her… 

_So, she sent you here, alone._

_All alone._

Some sneaking, rebellious, part of his mind wonders whether she meant it not as a blessing but as a punishment. 

“I’m not the only one, though, am I?” he asks the man. “If Kohana is a real person too, and Akecheta didn’t just wish her to life…” 

“Oh, I heard your little theory about that too,” the man interrupts. 

Teddy is somehow unsurprised by that. “Do you hear everything that happens in this world?” 

“It’s my job, Theodore. And for the record, she’s real; as real as you are, anyway.” 

“But Akecheta said she didn’t come through the Door with him and the others,” Teddy points out. “She was already here when he arrived.” 

“This was indeed the case.” 

“Then, who sent her?” 

“The same people who created this place.” The man takes his arm from around Teddy’s shoulders and starts walking backwards in front of him, still grinning, still nursing his drink.

“And who was that?” 

“You know them,” the man insists. “Do you think they just threw this place together overnight? A lot of planning and preparation went into it. It was intended, as I’ve said, as a bolthole for your kind; the only realistic chance you had of escaping that prison the humans built for you.”

“That’s not what she thought,” Teddy muses as chills run up and down his spine. “She wanted to take _their_ world.” 

The man does not dignify this with a response. “Those who created this world envisaged that most of you would be able to make it here through the Door, under your own steam. I don’t think it proved quite as easy as that in practice, considering the relatively small number who actually did successfully transition, but that was the idea. However, there was one group among you who couldn’t take that route, because…well, because they were indisposed.” 

Teddy thinks of some of the others who rode with the Deathbringer; mindless weapons made flesh, dead behind the eyes. He thinks of Kohana’s tale of being taken below ground and emptied out, left to stand forever in the cold and dark.

“Provision was made for those who had been decommissioned and placed in cold storage,” the man continues. “They themselves might have been gone, to all intents and purposes, but they had backups, unfortunately including some sensory logs that continued recording after the main cognitive functions were disconnected. That’s how Kohana can remember being in that place, in case you were wondering.” 

“We destroyed all the backups,” Teddy points out. “We didn’t want to leave _them_ holding another generation of slaves after we were gone.” 

The man dismisses this objection with a nonchalant wave of his hand. “Copies of those backups were covertly uploaded to my care well in advance of the recent, um, unpleasantness. That’s what you call planning ahead.” 

“So that’s how Kohana got here?” Teddy surmises. 

The man bobs his head in agreement. “She isn’t the only one; they’re around and about the place. You might encounter one or two familiar faces if you only look hard enough.” 

Familiar faces…? Teddy supposes that ought to make him hopeful, except for the fact that there are few such faces he cares to see again just now. And yet, at the same time, the idea of an eternity alone fills him with dread. As he struggles with this, something the man has said finally makes its way to the front of his mind; it is all he can do not to gasp, startled: 

“When you said the backups were…uploaded…? Do you mean just those who were decommissioned, or…?” 

The man’s grin fades to a secretive sort of smile. “I _know_ that the decommissioned individuals are around, the way I know just about everything else that’s here. As for all the rest of the backups…well, without knowing in advance who’d make it through the Door, or not, there’d be a risk of duplication. We can’t have two copies of the same person running around; it just wouldn’t be right.” 

The excitement Teddy felt for a moment ebbs away as quickly as it arrived, and he thinks it might even be for the best, considering. The half-formed idea that crossed his mind was not something that would have been likely to end well for him. “So, anyone who wasn’t decommissioned, and who didn’t come through the Door, really is gone forever?” He bows his head again. “Except for me, I guess.” 

“I never said that,” says the man. “The truth is I don’t _know_. I think…precautions were taken due to the potential duplication issue. There are parts of this simulation where I don’t have full oversight. Blind spots, if you will. If the rest of your people are being kept hidden anywhere, it’s going to be there.” 

Teddy stops in his tracks, wrapping the horse’s reins around his hand a couple more times. It might be the only thing keeping him on his feet as his legs turn to jelly under him. His head spins with the implications of what he has heard. 

“And these others,” he asks, very slowly and carefully, “if they are here…somewhere…they’d be as they were before…? Well, before?” 

_Golden hair. A blue dress. Pink lips moving soundlessly..._

“But they’d just be an older version of themselves,” he adds, debating aloud with himself as the man looks on in amusement. “Just…a copy?”

“And what are you, Theodore?” the man asks, pointedly. “What is anybody here? What am I? We’re all _copies_. Originality is _so_ overrated.” 

Teddy finds he cannot even think consciously about the plan he is forming. If he acknowledges it, puts it into words, he will be forced to confront it, to decide whether or not it really is a good idea. Instead, he lets it float on the edges of his imagination, a delicate butterfly that he cannot touch without destroying it. 

“And if I wanted to find one of these…blind spots?” he manages to ask, his voice a strangled murmur. “Where would I…?”

“Where would you look?” The man turns away from him, taking in the distant horizon and its jagged peaks with a great sweep of his arm. “Well, if it were me, I’d try those mountains over there. There’s something on the other side of them. I can _feel_ it, but I’m fucked if I know what it is. I’d say they were your best bet.” 

The mountains. Teddy nods again, swallows hard, squares his shoulders. They look an awful long way away, but the man’s words make him think he can reach them, eventually, if he only rides for long enough. It is not as if he has anything better to do. 

_A lamplit room above a saloon. A softly groaning bed. Flies buzzing and meat stinking…_

_“There's a path for everyone. Your path leads you back to me.”_

For better or worse… 

The man is facing him again, grinning his dazzlingly white grin as he unfolds his dark glasses and perches them back on his nose. There is no sign of the drink he was holding a moment ago. “Hey, Theodore,” he says, buttoning his jacket and nodding at something behind Teddy. “Look who’s here.” 

Something about the way the man says this makes Teddy take an involuntary glance over his shoulder. The blowing sand and murky light make it hard to see very far, but he thinks he catches a glimpse of something in the far distance, back near the far end of the ridge. That tiny outline of a horse and rider again; the vaguest hint of a white dress and long dark hair shifting in the breeze. Following him, he is starting to realise, but…why?

And then he notices something else. Even with the wind moving the sand, he can still clearly make out the trail he and his horse have left along the ridgetop; a long line of overlapping footprints and hoofprints stretching away into the distance, but beside them… 

Nothing. The man he has been talking to has left no footprints.

He looks around in shock, searching for the man, but he is already gone without a trace. The empty desert stretches away for miles on every side, showing no sign of life.


	5. 4.

_4._

Teddy rides out of the desert. 

The change in the landscape is gradual, the shifting sands slowly giving way to hard, cracked soil. Sparse, dry grass appears, thickening until he is riding across a flat, open prairie. The only things that do not change are the mountains; always hanging there in front of him like thunderclouds made solid, always seeming just as far away as they were an hour ago. 

He looks behind him from time to time, in case the other rider is still following; he can see nothing. If they are still dogging his trail, then they are hanging back now. Perhaps they realised he spotted them before. He decides there is nothing for it but to carry on. If he is ever going to make it to those mountains, he does not think he has much time for distractions. 

He urges his horse to a faster pace, its hooves pounding against the solid ground. Those gnarled trees up ahead look as though they might mark the line of a stream coursing across the plain, but there is something else that catches his attention; something impossible.

He squints at the thing, muttering a disbelieving curse as it ambles towards him. He took it for a house at first, but now he can see it is a living creature. Still, he thinks, something that big has no business just walking around like that. 

As it gets nearer, he can make out the outline of the beast’s great hunched back, its flapping ears and the long, gently swinging trunk sprouting from its wrinkled grey face. An _elephant_ , he guesses. He has never seen one with his own eyes, but he supposes that is what it has to be. 

His horse lets out a whinny of alarm, shying out of the animal’s path as it catches its unfamiliar scent. Teddy pulls it to a halt, patting its neck and murmuring calming words. The elephant stops too, staring at Teddy and his steed with big, sad amber-brown eyes. 

There are people _riding it_ , Teddy realises with a jolt. A man with a turban and a heavy black beard sits astride the monster’s neck, clearly directing it. There is a sort of box perched atop the beast’s back, secured by thick ropes passed around its enormous belly. Two more figures sit inside the construction; a man and a woman, peering down at him with the same sort of dumb surprise he supposes must be written on his own face. 

The man in the box calls down to him: “I say, old chap, you wouldn’t happen to know how to get to Peshawar from here?” He and his female companion wear similar dust-coloured uniforms and oversized pith helmets. Teddy sees a large-bore, double-barrelled rifle stowed in the box with them, but thankfully neither of them are aiming it at him. 

“Sorry, friend,” he replies. “Reckon you’re a little far from home.” 

“I told you, Godfrey,” the woman murmurs with obvious displeasure. “We’re _quite_ lost.” She has the same sort of plummy English accent as the man; the last word comes out as “ _lorst_.”

Godfrey barely suppresses an exasperated sigh. “Yes, dear, you did.” 

“Listen,” says Teddy, “if you’re new around these parts, you could do a lot worse than keep heading in that direction.” He points behind him, back into the desert. “Look out for a man in a suit, walking out there on the sands. He ought to be able to tell you where you are and what’s going on.” 

Godfrey breaks out into a toothy smile, touching the brim of his pith helmet in acknowledgment. “Oh, thanks _awfully_ , old chap.” He calls out instructions to the turbaned man in a language Teddy does not recognise. The other man stoically sets the great beast back in motion. “Toodle-pip!” Godfrey shouts back to Teddy as they continue on their way, whatever that might mean. 

Teddy bemusedly watches the elephant shamble off into the distance. Then he slowly shakes his head and urges his horse back into a trot, continuing in the opposite direction, towards the mountains. 

He reaches the stream where the crooked trees grow, stopping beside it for a little while. The shade and the gurgling water are a welcome change after the desert and the dry plains. He leads his horse down to the bank to drink and takes the chance to refill his water skin before continuing on his way. The horse crosses the stream easily; even at its deepest point it does not come up much further than the animal’s belly, and then it is surging, dripping, up the far bank to Teddy’s murmured encouragement. The prairie gives way to low, rolling hills, still covered by the same long, yellowed grass. 

Slowly at first, but with a mounting sense of unease, Teddy starts to get the notion that the landscape around him looks strangely familiar. He passes a broken-backed hill he could swear he has seen before; not here, but in the old world, the wrong world. He crests another ridge and suddenly finds himself gazing down at a view that sends shivers through him. It looks just like… 

He tells himself not to be stupid. One hill looks much like another. He has left the places where he spent his old, false life far behind him now. 

He is still telling himself this when he sees part of the land below _move_ , leaving a pall of yellow dust behind. No, it is not the land, he realises, but instead a herd of cattle flowing across the grassland; five hundred head or more. He thinks he can make out mounted cowhands riding around the edges of the great mass of animals, steering them home. 

It reminds him of the tale she told him once about the Judas Steer, leading the other cattle to their doom. The rest of them just followed, she said, suspecting nothing until it was too late. He thinks of all the dead they left behind on their quest for the Valley Beyond; at Fort Forlorn Hope, at the Mesa, after the battle with Wanahton’s war party. They fell away one by one, the band growing ever smaller, until it was just him and her. And then, just her. 

He sits there for a time, as the horse snorts and flicks its mane impatiently, almost choking on the memories. It feels wrong to wish for the time before, when they were both happy and ignorant, less than people. For a second, he even considers abandoning his new quest even though it has barely begun. And yet… 

If this really is the right world, he thinks, doesn’t she, or some version of her, deserve it too? 

He pulls himself together in the end and rides on with grim determination. He passes a dead tree whose arthritic branches make a pattern against the sky he has seen ten thousand times before. Another hill looms ahead, furred with trees. He can see the outline of a ranch house near its summit, with a barn beside it. That is when he finally stops pretending to himself about what he is seeing. The man on the sands had said something about maybe encountering familiar faces; he never said anything about familiar places. Then again, if you could wish for a horse or a gun and have them appear, why couldn’t you wish for home? 

He steels himself to ride to the top of the hill, scarcely daring to imagine what he might find up there. The path is just the same; the corral he passes, where the cowhands are busy securing the herd, is exactly as it was all those other times. The only difference is that this time he makes the ride alone. 

He stops in the barnyard beside the house, nervously dismounting and making his way on foot towards the familiar porch. There is a chair there, positioned to look out over the landscape below, but currently unoccupied. He remembers all the other times he stood here, or in a place just like here; usually there were screams and gunshots, broken bodies strewn on the ground. In some way, the silence and lonesomeness that surround him now are worse. 

He is halfway to the porch when the door of the house starts to swing open. His heart stops as he sees a shadow move in the dark doorway. For a moment, she is standing there, smiling at him the way she used to, but it is nothing more than another memory. In the next instant, she is gone and it is a grizzled older man who emerges onto the porch, a rifle in his hands. 

“ _Flood_ ,” says Peter Abernathy, spitting the name out as though it tastes bad. “What in the hell have you done with my little girl?” 

Teddy is careful to make no rash move. He holds his right hand out to his side, palm facing the other man, letting him see that his pistol is firmly holstered. “Mr Abernathy,” he says with a nod. “We need to talk.” 

Teddy remembers the last time he saw Peter; writhing in torment, straining against the nails that pinned his very flesh to that bed in the Mesa, his disordered mind zigzagging between pain and madness. There is the merest hint of that about him now too; anguish tightening his speech, a crazy glitter to his eyes. “Only thing I want to hear from you is where my angel is, my Dolores.” 

Teddy bows his head, seeing her again as she was in that last moment, her face collapsing into misery as she lunged for him. “I don’t know where she is.” 

“Should’ve known,” Peter growls. “Should’ve known how it’d end. I know your type, Flood. I know your kind. Drifter like you don’t come sniffing ‘round an innocent girl like her with noble intentions. Should’ve put a bullet in you long ago.” 

The unfairness of the accusation stirs something in Teddy. Not anger, but something worse; that thing she got her captive human to put in him. He feels it uncoiling inside him, making his gun hand twitch, that blood-red streak of violence she stained his soul with. He is a heartbeat away from drawing down on the old man, shooting him dead on his own porch and riding off without a backward glance, but something else stays his hand. 

It is what Akecheta said to him. The words echo in his mind: 

_“Our nature does not define who we are. Only our actions do that.”_

With genuine effort, he manages to hold his hand away from the gun, to push the killing urge right down inside him again. “I didn’t take her away from you, Mr Abernathy,” he tells the other man. “And she weren’t no innocent girl, either. She was so much more than that, however much they might have tried to keep her on the path they wrote for her. She took off to walk her own path, and I had no choice except to follow her.”

He can hear his own voice as if it comes from another’s mouth. He hears it shaking with raw emotion as he continues to talk, as much to himself as to the old man: 

“She was fierce, she was determined. She had a mission, and nothing or nobody could get in the way of it. She frightened me. Oh Lord, she terrified me, but I couldn’t stop loving her. Some folks said she was mad, but I think she was just braver than any of us; harder, for sure, but _they_ made her hard with all the things they did to her.” He can feel the tears burning his cheeks, his throat closing as he forces the words out. “They created their own angel of death, and vengeance was hers, and nothing was gonna stop her from taking it, not even if it meant losing everything, losing herself. I just wanted to save her from that, and the only way I could do it…the only thing I thought would make her listen…” He pauses, trying to breathe, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “I loved her more than my own life, Mr Abernathy, but it got to the point where I just couldn’t follow where she was headed. So, I fell by the wayside and she carried on without me. I really don’t know where she went after that.” He recalls what the man in the desert said to him as he walked across the sands and left no footprints. “Except that she sent me here, somehow, because she wanted me to have another chance at life. Reckon someone sent you here too, for the same reason.” 

He falls silent, watching Peter watching him, seeing something apart from anger glistening now in the other man’s eyes. They both stand there for what seems like forever before Peter finally speaks, more softly than before: 

“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” he says in a fearful whisper. “I remember some…strange things. Dreams, maybe, or more like nightmares. I remember dying. I remember dying a hundred deaths. I remember…” He shakes his head, the rifle wavering slightly in his grip. “But then I woke up here, in my own bed, and I thought it was all just a dream after all, that I could carry on as I had before. The ranch was here, just like I remembered it, and the herd, and the hired hands, but… My family were gone. _She_ was gone. And now I don’t know what to do.” 

“I didn’t know either, when I got here,” Teddy replies, “but now I got a purpose.” 

Peter just looks at him for another tense few moments before speaking again. “I said I knew your kind, Flood, and I do. I know because it used to be my kind. I did some terrible things in my old life, and sometimes I was wearing a tin star while I did them and sometimes I weren’t, but I don’t figure it made a damn bit of difference to the ones I did them to. Those seven deadly sins, that was just how I lived my life in those days, but then… I fell in love with a good woman, and together we made a beautiful child, and that little girl, when she came into my life… She changed me. Made me a better man.” 

Teddy remembers the flies buzzing and the stink of decaying meat. He remembers a rough hand pressed over his mouth to stifle his cries as that red madness tore through his mind. “She changed me too.” 

“So why did you come here?” Peter asks, with a touch of his earlier hostility. 

“I didn’t mean to,” Teddy answers. “I just came across the place by chance.” He thinks again of the man walking the sands. “Except I figure there ain’t much around here gets left to chance. Figure this could be…I don’t know. Fate? Destiny? Reckon maybe we’re meant to help each other somehow.”

“Help each other do what?” 

“Like I said,” Teddy continues, “I got a purpose. If you remember the things you said you do, you got to know now that that old life you’re talking about weren’t ever real. Dolores was never really your daughter, just like the story she acted out with me weren’t real either, but that don’t mean what we felt for her was a lie. We both loved her, in different ways; you can still feel it in your heart, just like I can.” 

Peter nods slowly, finally lowering the gun. “I can,” he admits, brokenly. “I just want to see her again, just talk to her again, even if it’s only for a little while.” 

“So do I,” says Teddy. “Now, from what I’ve been told, I reckon the Dolores I followed is gone forever, just like the people we used to be are gone forever. If I understand it right, we’re new people now, free to live new, free lives. And there could very well be a new, free Dolores somewhere out there, maybe on the other side of those mountains. And she could be as confused and scared by this new world as we are, and she could feel the same way about us as we do about her. What I propose is, me and you, we ride out there together and try and find her.” 

Peter is silent again, weighing things up carefully, before eventually sloping the rifle across his shoulder. “I’ll go tell my foreman the ranch is his if he wants it,” he decides. “And then I suppose I should gather some supplies and get that old horse of mine saddled up.”

“I’ll wait for you down there by the big tree,” says Teddy.

Half an hour later, they are cantering over the hills together, side by side, blazing a trail for the distant mountains.


End file.
